Guitarist Sebastian Noelle is a very busy player, but just does not make many records, which seem to come about every five years: Across The River (2006), Koan (2011) and now the marvelous Shelter. Assembling a first rate band consisting of Marc Mommaas on tenor saxophone (heard most recently on Ballads And Standards), pianist Matt Mitchell (worked with Tim Berne, John Hollenbeck Rudresh Mahanthappa), bassist Matt Clohesy (heard most recently on Gabriel Vicens's Point In Time) and drummer Dan Weiss (who worked with Mitchell in Berne's Snake Oil band).

Martha, an eighty-year-old former Canadian dancer, has been living in Paris for decades. Now losing her head, she is threatened to be sent to an old people's home. No way. Martha decides to call her niece, Canadian librarian Fiona, for help. Alas, when her relative arrives in the French capital, Martha has disappeared. Worse, Fiona loses both her identity documents and money after falling into the Seine. Now alone in Paris, the young woman is desperate. It is at this point that Dom, a homeless man who lives in a tent on the Île aux Cygnes, unexpectedly comes into her life…, for better or worse.